British Readers: Help Me Understand Your Idea of the Definite Article

Here’s a question I’m hoping a British reader, or at least one with a grasp of British English, can help me with: What’s the implication of dropping the definite article before plural team nicknames? I mean the habit of saying “Liverpool are hosting Wolves this weekend” rather than “Liverpool are hosting the Wolves this weekend.”

This is (obviously) not the standard usage in American English, which probably has to do both with differences in the language and with differences in the conception of sports teams’ identities. The team nickname is almost always a formally requisite element of an American sports team’s name, and is usually a plural noun meant to metaphorically characterize the members of the team. The name “the Dallas Cowboys” implies a team of (metaphoric) cowboys based in Dallas, so they can be referred to in brief as “the Cowboys,” with the definite article delimiting the group of cowboys that make up the team.

With British teams, nicknames tend to be rarer and more informal, and often drop the definite article completely: Wolverhampton are known as “Wolves” (but not “the Wolves”) Tottenham Hotspur are known as “Spurs” (but not “the Spurs”), etc. (This isn’t universal, however, since it doesn’t seem to apply to nicknames like “the Gunners” or “the Blues.”) To American ears, using the nickname without the article suggests an unknown or undifferentiated quantity: if you saw zombies swarming up the front lawn, you would cry, “Zombies are swarming up the front lawn!” in the same way that you might cry “Rovers are swarming toward our six-yard box!” But then, assuming there was only one group of zombies, you would quickly start adding the article (“My God, the zombies are eating Fido!”), which never seems to happen for Blackburn.

So what’s going on with that? Is it a sort of diminutive, like an affectionate continuation of the name-shortening that usually creates nicknames in the first place? Is it meant to denote an institutional quality, like “in hospital” or “at university,” other nouns for which British English eliminates the article and American English doesn’t? It seems to happen mostly with nicknames that are very old and established, so does it suggest a kind of deep-rootedness? Or is it just one of those arbitrary areas where British and American senses of definiteness inexplicably diverge (you say “in future” where we say “in the future,” we say “tell time” where you say “tell the time,” and so on)?

There’s no judgment implied by any of this; I’m just curious about the custom, and I’m sure I’m not the only American soccer fan who’s wondered about it. (Particularly since I, like almost every American soccer blogger, follow the usage whether I understand it or not.) So help me out, and together we can build a bridge of understanding just in time for English to collapse into a series of text-messaging conventions.

British Readers: Help Me Understand Your Idea of the Definite Article

Wolves in more of an abbreviation for the city of wolverhampton, their nickname is Wanderers and they are referred to as “The Wanderers”. As for Spurs, as a Spurs fan I call them “the spurs” on occasion Eg. ” oh when the spurs, go marching in” but i accept the monogram is because of it’s originality as the are plenty of united’s and city’s but only one hotspur

I think you’ll find that the definite article is dropped if the nickname is an extension of the town it relates to. Obviously Wolves is a shortened version of Wolverhampton, and you’d never refer to “The” Wolverhampton. Similarly, West Ham United are known as “The Irons”, and you would refer to them as “The” Irons, but just “United”, where United is an extension of the town name, West Ham. Referring to “The United” would be the equivalent of referring to “The West Ham” or “The Dallas”.

Blackburn Rovers becomes Rovers as it’s an extension of Blackburn, like United is an extension of West Ham, Newcastle or Manchester. Spurs is an abbreviation of Tottenham Hotspur, as with Wolves for Wolverhampton, so still relates to the town or city. Gunners is unrelated to the town (the team isn’t the Arsenal Gunners), so is “The”, in the same way that Cowboys are unrelated to the town/city of Dallas, hence “The Gunners”.

Rovers, Spurs, and Wanderers are all integral parts of the respective clubs’ names (with Tottenham being afforded the luxury of a dimunitive). That isn’t the case for the Reds, Blues, Lillywhites or Irons.

The bonus question is why does one use the third person plural when dispensing with the nickname in British English (e.g. Liverpool are home to Stoke) whereas one would always use the third person singular in American (e.g. New York is at New England).

I’ve always considered it to be convention, with a slight overlay of the fetishization* of American individualism over the British recognition of the value of collectivism.

*Yes, I did pause for some time over whether to use a “z” or “s” here.

Okay, that all makes sense. The nickname doesn’t take an article when it’s incorporated into the team name itself, and Spurs are just sort of cute about it. This is really helpful—thanks.

My follow-up question is: In that case, why doesn’t the team name itself take a definite article when it includes a nickname that’s intended to characterize the players? If you assume that “Rovers” was at least historically meant to refer to each individual player (or fan) as a Rover, then why isn’t the team “the Blackburn Rovers” rather than just “Blackburn Rovers”?

Those sorts of names seem conceptually different to me from names like “Manchester United,” where “United” refers more to the state of the club itself, almost like the “incorporated” at the end of a business name. (No idea why that example leapt into my mind when I was thinking about Man Utd.) This may be venturing into the answerable.

Ursus, the British group plural has been a source of endless uncertainty for me ever since I started the site. I always feel a little phony when I use it, since I’d almost never use it intuitively outside soccer writing (i.e., I’d say “Coldplay is a terrible band” rather than “Coldplay are a terrible band,” although I would be happy with either formulation). But for obvious reasons it’s so conventional in soccer writing that it seems strange not to use it (“Arsenal is really good this year” sounds wrong for so many reasons). And I read so much English football writing that it really is how I think about the teams.

Why it exists, I couldn’t say, though I’d love to hear any theories. Both choices (treating the noun as plural since it refers to multiple people, or treating it as singular since it refers to one collective entity) seem equally logical and illogical to me.

American English does drop the article to denote institutional quality, for example “I’m in graduate school” or I’m at work right now”.

One theory is that because these many of teams have existed for almost a hundred years, their name has become more than the players. People associate the name with a concept and mark, more so than with individual members.

Conversely, across the pond, when I saw the KC Wizards, I am thinking of Preki, and only Preki. The Rovers of Blackburn are important, but ultimatley Blackburn is much more than the ogre-guarani Roque Santa Cruz.

Yeah, I don’t the singular/mass noun thing. I can never quite bring myself to say “Liverpool are crap” or the like, since Liverpool, whether you’re talking about the club or the city, is a singular entity. But in BriNglish, clubs are treated as plural mass entities. Confusing. To me.

‘why isn’t the team “the Blackburn Rovers” rather than just “Blackburn Rovers”?’

I really doubt there’s any particular logic to it arising from a difference between US and UK English; I would have thought it was just a historical accident that the US went one way and the UK another. It would be interesting to look at the early history of football & cricket clubs in the UK to see if originally both forms were used and one eventually won out, or if it has always been that way.

Great preparations are being made at Kensal Rise grounds in anticipation of a huge crowd to welcome the Wolverhampton Wanderers, who are to face the Queen’s Park Rangers. Good-class team as the Londoners have proved themselves to be on more than one accoasion recently, we can scarcely recommend their claims to being equal to the celebrated “Wolves,” and, given equal luck during the game, we shall certainly expect the Wanderers to go back to the Midlands with “a scalp.”

And as a matter of interest, Tottenham’s official name is “The Tottenham Hotspur”, one of very few clubs to have “The” in its title – I believe The Heart of Midlothian & The Glasgow Celtic are right, and there might be a couple more in British football…

Harry, that’s brilliant; thanks for digging it up. So the article seems to have once been in use. I especially love the jaunty quotes around “a scalp.” Play it cool, Weekly Dispatch!

Keith, I hadn’t realized that about Tottenham. It’s “The Tottenham Hotspur Football Club,” right? You can see why they’re in grammatical straits to begin with—they’re trying to use three successive nouns as adjectives, the middle one of which is a proper name. It’s as if I started a group called “The Tijuana Rooster Cogburn Car Club” and we wound up with the nickname “Roosters.”

Celtic still have the “the” on their crest, so if it’s officially archaic they’re still at least honoring the form. It’s a little easier to parse in their case, since “Celtic” (like “Metropolitan”) is an adjective rather than a noun adjunct.

True, though it appears that the badge is owned by Celtic F.C. Limited, which is a subsidiary of Celtic plc; I view the “The” as an evocation of a long and storied history, as is the pendant “1888″.

The case of “Metropolitan” is an interesting one (at least for any pedant who is still reading). It may be most commonly used as an adjective, but in this particular case, it is a noun adjunct meant to evoke the original New York Metropolitans of the 1880s.

The important thing to remember in all of this is that the British way is correct and that your Americanisms are but befoullings of the purity of the Language as It is meant to be spoken. Then you’ll be fine.

You say that now. But whenever I’m in a grammatical quandry, I just think to myself “what would a highly sought-after character actor who lacks the star power to open a movie by herself say in this situation?” Works almost every time.

Remember that most grammatical structures and idioms are inherited by us. I certainly didn’t invent ‘square ball’, ‘hat-trick’ or ‘nutmeg’ but am able to use them in the certain knowledge that everyone else will understand, except perhaps americans who I don’t think use nutmeg? So it is not really a conscious choice.

Often people forget that most Languages are evolving very quickly, even in a generation, and US and British English are also diverging.

My post though relates more to the discussions about the use of mass noun plurals rather than the definite article.

There are 2 reasons that I prefer to use ‘are’ when talking about teams;
- many teams have names ending in s (Rangers, Spurs, Rovers) and to say ‘Spurs is’ just doesn’t sound right.
- when I think of teams I think of many people (players, managers, fans) and therefore ‘Arsenal are’ feels better. To use ‘is’ would imply it/he/she. ‘It’ seems impersonal and we don’t really give teams a gender in the way that cars or trains might have one.

First: this is my easily my favorite comments thread of all time (maybe challenged only by the one where everyone posted pictures of the skulls of famous dead people). So thanks.

Second: AlbanScot, no one in America would say “Spurs is”; we’d say “Spurs are” and “Tottenham is,” following the singular or plural form of the noun. But I know what you mean about the implied plurality of groups. I don’t think there’s really a bad approach here, actually.

I am American, and clearly remember learning in Language class in the 5th grade that when an organization has more than one member, it is plural. Therefore, one would say, “Coldplay are a great band,” because is has more than one person in the band (even though band implies more than one to begin with).

I’d certainly say that both the Americans and the British do not know how to speak properly anymore nor do the British know that they do not speak properly. That is, of course, not to say that some Americans and some British don’t speak properly because that certainly isn’t the case either. However, the teaching of grammar in American and British schools is not done very well.

I have been to London twice and have been to many different regions of the U.S., and have heard most people on both sides of the pond end sentences with prepositions which is in clear violation of all English grammar rules. The lack of the use of whom is also non-existent; especially in the U.S. Everyone I hear would ask, “Who were you talking to?” instead of, “To whom were you talking?” Lastly, I rarely hear anyone in the U.S. use the subjunctive in English which is a shame. I cannot stand hearing someone say, “If I “was”…” If clearly implies a hypothecial scenario and requires the subjunctive “were.”

If I was you, and I really couldn’t stand that type of thing, I’d start saving up for the psychiatrist who I’d surely end up talking to.

The “never end a sentence with a preposition” “rule” was essentially plucked out of thin air by John Dryden in 1672. There is no good reason to always adhere to it.

(Incidentally, why did you write “…more than one to begin with” rather than “…more than one with which to begin”?)

“Whom” is a remnant of a morphological case system which has practically disappeared from English. Traces remain, such as with personal pronouns (eg. subjective “I”, objective “me”). The who/whom distinction is being lost in most situations; it rarely results in confusion, just like how we already get by just fine with identical subjective and objective forms of the second personal pronoun (“you”/”you”).

“If I was…” is a very common alternative to “If I were…”; again, the sense still comes across perfectly well. As indeed it does when one uses a singular verb with a collective noun. Either is acceptable; one happens to be more common west of the Atlantic, the other east. Which is the point, really: what is correct in a language is determined by all the people who use it, and this often results in messiness and irregularity and variety — features of language, not bugs. Millions of people have been ignoring your fifth-grade teacher for years and we have somehow avoided falling into mutual unintelligibility. If language never changed, your comment would not have been possible: you would have merely been able to squawk ape-like and slap the person nearest you.

And would you look at that — I’ve not been smitten with a thunderbolt.

Language is an ever evolving entity and part of the fun of it is way it changes due to diaspora and geographical accident. The prescriptivism of Swift in the eighteenth century and others took us away from the chaos that had reigned before including The Great Vowel Shift and the regional differences apparent between Chaucer and Gawain and the Green Knight. I just don’t think there are any rules but it’s a super exercise to head down the pub or go onto a blog and argue for the purity of a language hammer and tongs!

Firstly the official name is Rangers FC and, though I am not among them, many Rangers supporters dislike the way non-Scottish people use the prefix “Glasgow”. That said, when the prefix is used, the definite article often is too, contrary to your assumption. “I support the Glasgow Rangers” is perfectly normal, as is simply The Rangers. Both with and without are absolutely fine. Indeed, the original club crest read “The Rangers Football Club.”

Brian, I think you’re mistaking this British way of calling football (or rugby or cricket…) teams as uniquely British. It’s not. All of Europe, South America call their teams the way the British do.

Santos, Flamengo, Estudiantes, Velez Sarsfield – no one calls these teams “the” anything. If anything, it’s the American custom of using the definite article that’s unique, or at least not so common. I think some African football teams use “the.”

As for “Liverpool are” v. “is” – that’s just a different way of seeing a sports team. The Brits see a team as plural, Americans as singular. Simple as that.